Drug agents prowl city bus stations

Law agencies team up to fight trafficking

Many travelers who have passed through the downtown Jacksonville Greyhound bus station in recent months have come in contact with drug agents on the lookout for smugglers toting illegal drugs.

Police say allowing the agents to board buses and search passengers' luggage has resulted in several substantial drug busts, but opponents say the searches are at the least inconvenient to thousands of innocent travelers and that police use intimidation to get targeted passengers to comply.

For a handful of agents from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Florida Highway Patrol, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Customs, it is their full-time job to make sure those who use mass transportation systems to traffic drugs are caught when they come through Jacksonville.

They routinely patrol the Greyhound station, as well as the Amtrak station, wearing slightly dingy jeans and even dirtier sneakers. Sometimes the agents sip coffee or strike up a conversation with a stranger. At all times, they are watching everyone and everything around them. People who look nervous or hold on too tightly to luggage might have something to hide.

The patrol of the Greyhound station is just one initiative funded by the North Florida High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, or HIDTA. The federally funded program gives local, state and federal law enforcement agencies the resources to work together in order to eliminate or reduce drug trafficking in critical regions around the nation.

Other initiatives include surveillance of the seaports and a task force that focuses on shutting down trafficking operations in Flagler, Putnam and St. Johns counties. The Greyhound surveillance is one of the most successful initiatives to curb drug trafficking in the area, law enforcement officials said.

"It's just like a traffic stop, except they are on the bus," said Lt. John Hartley, director of narcotics investigations for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

"The drugs that we catch here are not destined for Jacksonville," he said, adding most traffickers are northbound to New York or Chicago or southbound to Miami.

According to Hartley, in any given week about 1,500 Greyhound passengers allow their luggage to be searched. He said most of the searches are quick pat-downs, but about once a day the agents come across a passenger with luggage they feel requires an extensive inspection.

"Some months we don't get anybody; you do hundreds of searches with nothing," he said. "In a year, you may get a dozen people at the Greyhound."

Occasionally, the agents receive tips, but usually they just follow their gut. No one else knows who they are until they board a bus or a train and show their badges and ask for voluntary compliance to check IDs and search bags.

The drug busts that occur as a result of the searches have been record-setting. That was the case in September, when three travelers were arrested at the station and charged with trafficking 127 pounds of Ecstasy. Milton Blackson, Anais Mayen and Xavier Genevieve denied knowing each other, but all three were bound for New York City from Fort Lauderdale.

The agents became suspicious when Genevieve acted nervous as they checked his identification. They found $13,000 in cash in his carry-on luggage and 17 plastic bags of Ecstasy pills in his checked luggage. Authorities then found 17 bags of the pills in Blackson's luggage and 10 bags in Mayen's.

The most recent bust at the Greyhound station was on Tuesday, when 39-year-old Carnell Williams was arrested. Police said he was bound from Miami to New York City with 2 pounds of cocaine.

Of the 28 regions that have been designated high-intensity drug traffic areas since 1990, Northeast Florida is the newest. Through the program, $1.4 million has been funneled to law enforcement agencies around the region to finance various initiatives designed to identify, dismantle or disrupt drug trafficking organizations.

Ed Williams, the director of Northeast Florida HIDTA since its inception, said although the state already had other areas in South and Central Florida, a third was necessary. He said the statistics from Northeast Florida HIDTA, including over 500 arrests since its inception, show the region was in need.

"Florida is so diverse," he said. "In South Florida, their crime problems are totally different from Central Florida and Central Florida is totally different than it is here."

He said Jacksonville is an ideal hub for drug traffickers because of the variety of access methods, including the interstates, railroad lines, ports, the coast and Jacksonville International Airport.

Williams said the Greyhound station is the most frequent target for drug smugglers using mass transportation systems. He said the bus is cheaper than airplanes or trains, security is less stringent, and passengers can travel across the nation.

"If you look at [Interstate] 95 and it goes from South Florida all the way up to the Canada border," he said. "So, it's a reasonable way for traffickers to ship some of their cargo. You have [Interstate] 10, which goes from the West to the East Coast here."

Not everyone agrees with this method of catching bad guys.

Bill White, chief assistant public defender for the 4th Judicial Circuit, covering Clay, Duval and Nassau counties, said officers boarding a bus and asking to search luggage poses enough of a threat that ensuing searches should no longer be considered voluntary.

He said the Supreme Court has ruled that searches like the ones being done at the Greyhound bus terminal are legal. But police boarding a bus and asking to check each passenger's identification could easily be interpreted as intimidating, he said.

"I think it's unfortunate that what we're doing is allowing police officers that may be operating on nothing more than a hunch to go on board buses and basically harass people," White said.

"It ignores the fact that a number of people who were innocent are going to be searched," he said. "Most of the people they go and talk to aren't doing anything wrong."

Though the surveillance of the Greyhound station is just one of the many HIDTA initiatives in the area, nearly all the programs involve covert operations. And every law enforcement agency within the eight-county area is involved.

Col. Tommy Seagraves of the Nassau County Sheriff's Office said without HIDTA, authorities in Nassau County wouldn't have been able to hunt down Joseph Gregory Melton in August 2001.

Melton and 10 others were arrested after a three-month-long undercover operation. Collectively, they were charged with 26 counts of sale and delivery of cocaine, including five charges on Melton. He later pleaded guilty and is serving 60 months in state prison, officials said.

During the arrests and later at a search of Melton's home, authorities seized over $40,000 in property, four cars, over $1,000 in cash and more than $5,000 worth of crack and powder cocaine.

"There were numerous kilos of cocaine that he had cooked down to crack cocaine that he was selling," Seagraves said.

"The networking -- being able to work with all the agencies and tie information -- is the best benefit," said Seagraves, adding that the DEA and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office helped bring Melton in.

Williams agreed, saying the cooperation is what makes the HIDTA program a success.

"The more we can share data, the more successes we have and the better overall for safety," Williams said.

Staff writer Tia Mitchell can be reached at (904) 359-4425 or via e-mail at tmitchelljacksonville.com.